Bone scan!

As I understand it, the bone scan is actually a fancy Geiger counter. They inject you with a radioactive dye, wait until it migrates to cancer spots (as well as old bone injuries and arthritis), and then take a scan. It has no external radiation like a CT scan. If for no other reason than to have a baseline scan it may be worth it.

The issue of to many (CT) scans is an open issue with me. The Ductal cancer that I have does not always rase your PSA. They have to follow it with CT and bone scans. The issue is that if I live long enough the amount of radiation I am getting from CT scans will cause its own problems.

There is radiation with bone scan, usually, if we are talking of subsequent bone scans, they need to be 6 months apart.

This paper /www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27290607 indeed confirms that PET is more sensitive and specific than the bone scan. There, the patients received a bone scan and PET within 3 months. From the conclusion: "Our results indicate that BS in patients who have received PSMA PET for staging only rarely offers additional information; however, prospective studies, including a standardized integrated x-ray computed tomography (SPECT/CT) protocol, should be performed in order to confirm the presented results."

I know this does not answer your dilemma, but perhaps you should consult with a radiation oncologist if you are worried about the radiation dose. Sometimes, even MRI can be used to put all the puzzle pieces together, with MRI there is no radiation. But, you should know that no scanning method is 100% specific.

I just had my full body bone scan done today, really bothered me to know that I am well past my lifetime safe radiation limit, especially with the amount of radiation damage that I have suffered after undergoing two major radiation events in 9 years.

They used the GE Discovery NM/CT 670 machine on me today, pretty slick. Said they would soon be upgrading it to be a NM/PET machine.

I was concerned about the radiation isotope being used, but no other way to conduct the test. It went from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet - the scan

The operator said that after it was done, they shoot the scans to the expert upstairs, and if he saw anything suspect or not quite right, they would shoot additional pictures. After waiting 20 minutes, they came back and he had said he wanted a full 360 degree re-scan of my entire pelvic area, including my prostate bed. Be interesting to see what they find out in my case.

Between this test, and the recent full nerve conduction test by my neurologist, finally hoping to get some positive answer about the extreme pain I am undergoing.

Good luck on your body scan. Including the wait in-between, I spent nearly 1 1/2 hours on the machine. They said I was in a deep sleep about 3 minutes after the main scan began, I have no recollection of being asleep.

George,
There is no hospital stay .I have to stay in a hotel for a week. 23000Euro is the cost of the radiation( prostate bed &L3).It is the European cyberknife center in Munich.yes,they have the newest Cyberknife machine and I visited there in September.
Those in Hamburg don't recommend any kind of radiation(IMRT,CYBER..) because they say what the images show is INCONCLUSIVE!
I live in Bucharest,Romania.
Thanks

Darie,

are you seeing Dr. Surcel then? He is at the Fundeni Clinical Institute.

Ask two doctors and you get three opinions. I had mets down to 1mm in size radiated. Yes, you cannot be sure if these are not false positives but since you have no side effects of CyberKnife you can just have them radiated.

I also went to an IMRT clinic before and they said they only radiate if the mets have 1 cm in size. Probably because they have to radiate an area of a certain size which is too large to apply that to 1 mm mets. But CyberKnife is more targeted so you can radiate smaller mets.

George

George,
No, I don't know dr.Surcel,but my RO is from Fundeni institute, prof.Dr Rodica Anghel. She warned me about radiating the prostate bed where I had 78Gy during my SRT and she considers the uptake area fibrotic,not relapse.
Many opinions as you said! My decision is to go for Cyberknife.